Hall campaign makes deli stop

NEW WINDSOR — You might not expect to find anything connected to reckless Wall Street investments and global financial meltdowns amid the loaves of panella bread and aromas of pepperoni and provolone at Mama Theresa's Italian Specialties deli.

BY Chris McKenna

NEW WINDSOR — You might not expect to find anything connected to reckless Wall Street investments and global financial meltdowns amid the loaves of panella bread and aromas of pepperoni and provolone at Mama Theresa's Italian Specialties deli.

But that is where Rep. John Hall stood Monday, right in front of the sausage display case, to highlight a tiny piece of the financial regulation overhaul that President Barack Obama signed into law last week: new limits on the "swipe fees" that businesses are charged every time a customer uses a credit or debit card.

It was not one of the law's big changes, but it was one that Hall, D-Dover Plains, sponsored — and one whose impact was easier to illustrate back in his district than, say, the regulation of the derivatives market.

Beside Hall stood a grateful Jim DeStefano, who has run Mama Theresa's in a strip mall off Route 32 for more than eight years.

He says that each credit card transaction — about 35 percent of his deli's sales — costs him around 25 cents, plus roughly 3 percent to 3.5 percent of the sale.

"These fees that small businesses are charged rack up very quickly," DeStefano said. "It's nice to see Washington finally trying to help the small businessman and the consumer."

Hall, who kicked off his re-election campaign Saturday, is touting the sweeping financial reform as a boon for consumers, taxpayers and the nation's financial stability.

Among other things, the law will create a Consumer Protection Bureau and take steps to prevent the sort of predatory lending that led to the housing-market bubble and collapse.

Both Republicans seeking Hall's seat oppose the law, as did most Republicans in Congress.

Westchester County ophthalmologist Nan Hayworth argued Monday that the 2,300 pages of legislation ignored the "root cause" of the financial meltdown — in her view, the mortgage institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and posed a "costly and inefficient way to address the problem."

"How are we to rely on yet another set of government bodies to do what other government-sanctioned bodies didn't do?" Hayworth asked.

Neil Di Carlo, a Wall Street compliance officer from Putnam County who's also in the race, called the law "one of the worst pieces of legislation in our country's history."